WYOMING

With an unforgiving climate, arid plains,
rugged mountains, and scarce deposits of precious
metals, Wyoming was one of the final
western states organized for statehood. The
98,000 square miles that would become the
forty-fourth state came to the United States as
a result of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the
settlement of the disputed Oregon boundary
line with Great Britain in 1846, and the Mexican
cession of 1848 under terms of the Treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

John Colter, a member of the Lewis and
Clark expedition (1804-6) who set off on his
own to explore the Rocky Mountains, was
probably the first white American to visit
what is now the state of Wyoming (although
the Verendrye brothers, Louis-Joseph and
Francois, may have pushed that far west in
1742-43). When he returned in 1807, Colter
told fantastic stories of the wonders he had
seen in the Yellowstone region. Colter was followed
by numerous trappers and adventurers
who trapped and traded in the Rocky Mountains.
By the late 1840s thousands of settlers
were annually crossing what some considered
the "Great American Desert" on their way to
California's gold fields, the Mormon Zion at
the Great Salt Lake, or the greener pastures of
Oregon territory. However, few stayed to endure
Wyoming's harsh winters. In 1851 a council
at Fort Laramie, conducted by Thomas
Fitzpatrick and assisted by Jesuit missionary
priest Father Pierre De Smet, secured permission
from several Native American leaders for
the safe passage of pioneers across Indian
lands in return for a promise of annuities
from the U.S. government. Following an outbreak
of warfare in 1865 along the Bozeman
Trail, intermittent conflicts persisted until the
tribal alliance under Sitting Bull was defeated
in 1876. Meanwhile, to protect and govern the
remote white settlements along the Union Pacific
route, the Wyoming Territory had been
created in 1868 by carving off the western section
of the Dakota Territory and including
parts of what is now Utah and Idaho.

Territorial government for Wyoming was
organized on May 19, 1869, in Cheyenne. On
December 10, 1869, in an unsuccessful effort to
encourage female settlers, the first territorial
legislature adopted an act granting women the
right to vote. The following year, census figures
showed 9,000 inhabitants (not including Native
Americans), mostly located in small communities
or cattle ranches along the newly
completed Union Pacific Railroad line that traversed
the southernmost part of the territory.
Recognizing the uniqueness of the Yellowstone
region, the northwest corner of Wyoming was
designated by the federal government as the
nation's first national park in 1872. Cattle
ranching, and later sheep ranching, soon followed
the rail lines and spread northward as
the Native American resistance faded. In 1886
the territorial legislature established the University
of Wyoming, which remains the state's
only baccalaureate and graduate school (seven
regional "community colleges" were created
after World War II). In 1890 Wyoming's representative
to Congress, Joseph M. Carey, claiming
the territory had more than 100,000 residents,
introduced enabling legislation in the
U.S. House of Representatives seeking statehood,
and on July 10 the Wyoming Statehood
Act was signed by President Benjamin Harrison.
An official census conducted that year
would show Wyoming's actual population to
be only 62,555.

Wyoming's politics are generally conservative
and independent-minded, with Republicans
usually controlling the legislative and
statewide elected offices. Until court-ordered
reapportionment of the Senate in 1965, rural
interests, headed by the Wyoming Stock Growers
Association, dominated statehouse politics.
Although Wyoming's constitution has been
amended or altered more than sixty times, it
remains essentially the same as drafted in 1889,
providing for a bicameral legislature (sixty
representatives and thirty senators), which
meets for a forty-day session beginning in
January in odd-numbered years, and for a
twenty-day session in even-numbered years to
consider and adopt a budget. The state constitution
also granted full voting rights to
women, the only state to do so at that time,
earning for Wyoming the name "Equality
State." The constitution provides for an elected
governor, who serves a four-year term, but no
lieutenant governor (the secretary of state is
next in line of succession). Other elected executive
officers include a superintendent of
public instruction, auditor, and treasurer. The
state supreme court consists of five justices
elected to terms of eight years.

Petroleum production, mining (especially
coal in the Powder River Basin), and natural
gas provide the basis of Wyoming's economy.
Although Wyoming still proudly calls itself
the "Cowboy State," the agricultural sector
produces less revenue and offers fewer jobs
than the state's mineral industry or its tourism
industry, which attracts several million visitors
each summer to Yellowstone Park, Devils
Tower, and other scenic vistas, and winter
sports enthusiasts to Wyoming's mountains
during the long snowy months. Because of a
reliance on extractive industries, particularly
oil drilling, for its tax base, Wyoming has always
been vulnerable to booms and busts.
With the decline of oil prices in the 1980s,
Wyoming's population, already the smallest of
any state in the nation, declined to 456,000 in
1990, but rose to 494,000 in 2000.

Wyoming's most notable political leaders
include Chief Washakie (c. 1801-1900) of the
Shoshones, who maintained peaceful relations
with whites and settled his people on the
Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming;
Nellie Tayloe Ross (1876-1977), who in 1924
was the first woman elected as governor of a
state; and Richard "Dick" Cheney (b. 1941),
who served as chief of staf to President Gerald
R. Ford (1974-76), Wyoming's lone representative
to the U.S. House (1979-89), secretary
of defense (1989-1993) in the George Bush administration,
and the vice president of the
United States in the George W. Bush administration
in 2000.